Best Bets

So, Betsteroids, how many New Year’s resolutions have you broken already? Here it is day two of a bright, shiny year and already the B. has broken six, including “thou shalt not be snarky.” Being a hardened, cynical journalist, the Betster really has trouble with that one....

Time sure does fly up here in the dark north. After weeks of anticipation, a little stress and some foul weather now and then, the big day will finally arrive. Holy Axial Tilt! That’s right: On Dec. 23, we finally start gaining some daylight hours. Oh, it will be a minute or two a day, but our lon...

One of Alaskans’ favorite sports these days is making fun of how woefully unprepared cities in the Lower 48 can be when snow falls. We’re not talking respectable amounts of snow, like your average Buffalo, N.Y., blizzard of 5 feet. We’re talking 5 inches in downtown Portland, Ore. Apparently o...

Now’s the time when our social calendars fill up like a bath tub at the bottom of Niagara Falls. Everyone wants to have open houses, office parties and fancy social affairs where men might even have to wear ties. OK, put on a pair of clean blue jeans without holes and maybe even a button-up shirt....

In a 1784 letter to his daughter, Sally, Benjamin Franklin observed that the bald eagle should not be the symbol of the United States. “He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly,” Franklin wrote. A better bird symbol would be the turkey, Franklin wrote: “For the ...

The other night while driving home from the word mines, the Betster stopped by Beluga Lake to gaze at the rising full moon. With a new sheen of ice, the moon shimmered on the lake in one of those only-in-Alaska moments.
While the B. stood there watching the moon, a guy pulled up in a pickup truck wi...

Ten days after Daylight Saving Time flipped, the Betster still hasn’t quite adjusted to the time change. Here at Latitude 59 degrees, as we slouch toward the winter solstice, it doesn’t really matter which side of the day gives up sunshine. Within a few weeks we’ve lost an hour of daylight any...

Jump into the Betster’s wayback machine and travel a year ago to the magical time of fall 2012. Remember that, Betsteroids? From Oct. 17-23, the average temperature was 29.93 degrees, with a low of 20. Oct. 23-30 the average temperature was 30 degrees, with a low of 19. From Oct. 31-Nov. 3, the av...

If you’re one of those grumpy Homer curmudgeons who don’t like kids and live downtown, you might want to turn out your lights, lock your doors and hide in the basement tonight. Not only will your neighbors’ little darlings come knocking for Halloween, but so will children from as far away as D...

After decades of living in Alaska, the years and seasons blur together. The Betster’s memories might have gotten mixed up, but yours truly dimly remembers the progress of summer to fall goes something like this: August, rain; September, more rain and colder; October, colder, lots of frost and some...